Lombardia Alan Lomax and Diego Carpitella's historic 1954 recordings from Lombardy run the gamut of folk styles and traditions - from jovial wedding and carnival songs to characteristic Italian choral renderings of classic Child Ballads, the enchanting calls of songbird hunters, and a panpipe orchestra playing marches, waltzes, and the overture to Verdi's Rigoletto. Italian Treasury In 1954, Alan Lomax and Diego Carpitella set out on a yearlong voyage of discovery that resulted in an exhaustive documentation of Italian folk music. 'It was a mythic time. None of us suspected that that world - made of music, songs, poverty, joy, desperation, custom, violence, injustice, love, dialect, and poetry, formed over the course of millennia - would be swept away in a couple of years . . . by the voodoo of 'progress.'' -Vittorio De Seta